Furthermore, “forecasts suggest that the number of podcast listeners will exceed 160 million by 2023 after increases of around 20 million each year.”
With numbers like these, the real question is why it took YouTube so long to want a piece of the pie.
It’s true that YouTube already benefits from podcasters repurposing oman phone number list their audio material by adding a simple background image and streaming it on the video-sharing site. But with Amazon, Spotify, Apple, and even Google making money off of podcast content, YouTube is clearly looking to make things a little more official.
That’s where their grant program comes in, encouraging podcasters to bring popular content to YouTube, even if it’s not on an exclusive basis. Simply having popular content on your site will build market share.
Once the audience is there, they are more likely to spend time engaging with other content on YouTube as well. However, grants are not the company's only plan to attract new creators.
In an attempt to compete with TikTok’s fast-paced and quirky approach to media entertainment, YouTube created Shorts in September 2020 and launched it worldwide in July of the following year.